Twist and Shout! Belle Plaine is going to the Class 3A State Volleyball Tournament
2018 Belle Plaine volleyball team wins the Douglass sub-state tournament.
by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — Quick, before you read the next paragraph, when was the last time Belle Plaine got to a state volleyball tournament?
That would be 1995 (not 1985 as was originally reported). Yeah, the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was just nine years old.
But here we are. The Belle Plaine volleyball team is heading to the Class 3A State Tournament (see bracket here).
The Dragons will be playing at the Hutchinson Sports Arena this Friday afternoon. The 32-8 Dragons will be playing a round-robin tournament with Silver Lake at 3:30 p.m., Beloit at 6:30 p.m. and Frontenac at 7:30 p.m. If they finish in the top two, they will play the next day in a single elimination state championship bracket.
“It’s been a great fall in Belle Plaine,” said Karen Wiseman, in her 10th year with the program. “Our football team is doing very well and now we have reached the state tournament. The students are so excited.”
Coincidentally, Belle Plaine’s football team is traveling to play Hutchinson Trinity for a first round playoff game on Friday at 7 p.m. They will be playing at the same time as the volleyball team in the third round-robin match.
Belle Plaine qualified for state after beating host Douglass 20-25, 25-23, 25-22 in a time-consuming exhausting sub-state championship match with many ebbs and flows. Parents were said to have been a tiny bit stressed.
“We knew going in, we had a very good chance of winning the tournament,” Wiseman said. “We had beaten Douglass a couple weeks ago. It was just a case of staying on top of them this time around.”
Belle Plaine easily dismantled Fredonia 25-4, 25-10 in the first round of the Douglass sub-state, and then had to play Wichita Collegiate – winning 28-26, 25-14. That set up the finals against Douglass which saw Belle Plaine fall behind losing the first set before winning the second by two points and the third by three points.
The Dragons are primarily made up two seniors, two juniors and a bunch of sophomores.
“We were 32-8 last season and had seven seniors graduate,” Wiseman said. “But we knew we had enough returning that we were going to be pretty good.”
Belle Plaine has been competitive all season and finished second in the Central Plains League, losing only to Garden Plain.
“This is a group that plays well together and played a lot during the summer,” Wiseman said. “We have several great hitters, but lately we have become a much better defensive unit.”
The team is led by a couple of four-year starters.
Cici Contreras has started since her freshman year as an outside hitter. She is joined by Hanna Mowdy – a middle hitter blocker and one of the state’s leaders in kills.
Madi Gooch is a junior and the team’s libero. Lea Morel, a junior, is an outside hitter and another key leader with kills.
Then there are the sophomores. Tori Lujan is a sophomore setter and is the second in Class 3A in assists. Alyssa Hunter is a middle blocker and hitter. Cheyenne Cooper is a setter and an opposite hitter.
The state tournament, of course, will be a higher level of play. Silver Lake is a perennial state tournament qualifier.
“Silver Lake has strong hitters and blockers,” Wiseman said. “We saw Beloit during the summer, and they have height but I think we can play with them. I’m not sure I know enough about Frontenac to comment.”
Nevertheless, if Belle Plaine has success at the state tournament they will be Twisting and Shouting… just like Ferris Bueller (see video here).
